Educating prisoners is one of the simplest and most cost-effective interventions to implement in confinement settings, and it can have a huge payoff. Incarcerated adults have significantly lower literacy skills than ordinary Americans, making it difficult for them to reenter society when their sentences are up. But a recent Rand Corp. study covering 30 years’ worth of data shows that giving prisoners access to education can lower recidivism by 43 percent. Such programs could save states hundreds of millions of dollars, but they cannot be done without giving inmates the proper access to literature.